


Stop Falling

by noraebangbang



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-10
Updated: 2015-11-10
Packaged: 2018-05-01 00:48:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5185856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noraebangbang/pseuds/noraebangbang
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Minseok absolutely does not need a soulmate. And he certainly does not need a nineteen-year-old soulmate. Unfortunately for him, Baekhyun isn't one to take rejection well.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stop Falling

“No.”

Kim Minseok realizes the absurdity of telling his wrist no considering he’s fully aware there’s no get-out-of-soulmate-free clause. He’d checked. Twice. But saying it felt like maybe he could sway Fate to see things his way. And his way was having an actual fully-formed adult as his fated other half, not some…kid.

The name on his wrist was innocuous enough. Almost kind of cute. Byun Baekhyun. But the fact that the birth date that popped up right beneath his name put him firmly in the under-21 category meant that Minseok definitely wanted to rebuke this entire soulmate system.

He scrunches his nose up in a frown as he attempts again to scrub his wrist in the hopes that the date would magically update itself, just as it had magically appeared. Approximately six gallons of soap later and the date remains the same—Minseok’s new soulmate is a measly nineteen years old.

Minseok groans and lets his head fall against the washroom mirror. Nineteen. At nineteen, he’d been working his way through law school. Was this Byun Baekhyun in university? How does a kid even handle having their soulmate stamped on them at such a young age?

A knock at the door makes Minseok gasp, and he stands straight again.

“Minseok?” Minseok contemplates ignoring Zhang Yixing, but realizes it’s probably not the wisest decision to pretend not to hear someone who signs your paychecks. “Are you alright?”

“Fine,” Minseok says, eying the name on his wrist again. “Sorry. Gimme a minute.”

“Okay, well I’m going home now,” Yixing calls again. “Didn’t want to just leave without saying so. Sure you’re alright?”

“I’m fine.” Minseok does his best to actually sound that way. He reaches to grab some paper towels to dry his hands before pulling his bathroom door open.

Yixing hops back, startled, then tries to laugh his surprise off. “You ran off pretty suddenly so I thought maybe you were in here dying.”

“No, no, I’m not dying,” Minseok says. He considers telling Yixing about his wrist, about this person, but instead just tugs his suit sleeve down a bit more. “Have a good night.”

“You too,” Yixing says with a nod. He gives Minseok’s shoulder a too-firm pat before turning to head out of his office.

Minseok, once the door closes, stares at his wrist again. He mumbles  _no_ to himself at least a dozen more times in the hopes that it’ll finally work.

***

By the time the clock strikes one am, Minseok has his head resting against the table to stare at the world through the distorted glass of all the shots lined up in front of him. His friends on the other side of the table look like misshapen blobs as they move, hands dancing with drunken embellishments about the previous weekends’ conquests and mountains of work they have to do.

Their usual bar caters mostly to fellow lawyers and other professionals, which is somewhat comforting considering there’s little likelihood of gossip spreading around when it’s possible someone also has just as much dirt on you.

His fingertips dance along the table top for a moment. “I got my assignment,” he mumbles.

“What?” Kim Junmyeon, friend and fellow lawyer, asks somewhat loudly. “What’d you say?”

Rather than verbalize, Minseok lifts his wrist feebly to show off the name and date. He closes his eyes as various hoots and whistles start, but snaps them open again at the feel of a hand snatching his wrist closer.

“Oh wow, your person is just a kid,” Kim Jongdae comments, inspecting Minseok’s wrist. “That’s kind of awkward. Or hot. I’m not sure which. Maybe both?”

“How much of a kid are we talking?” Oh Sehun asks.

“Nineteen,” Jongdae says. His laugh pierces the air and Minseok yanks his wrist away to let his arm hang limply by his side.

“Well you obviously can’t do anything about it,” Junmyeon says as he motions for the bartender to bring another pitcher of beer over. “That’s way too young. You can wait a couple of years before finding this person.”

“Found him,” Sehun says.

Minseok lifts his head slowly. Curiosity trumps ennui as he leans closer to Sehun to stare at his phone. And just like that, there’s Minseok’s person. A boy. An adorable boy, with a bright look and a face that crinkles when he smiles and a floppy mess of light pink hair. The profile Sehun dug up shows this Baekhyun standing beside a road sign that reads FUCKING, finger guns pointing to the obscenity as his giant gray hoodie practically devours his entire top half. Minseok feels a tiny twitch at his mouth and promptly tamps that smile back down.

“Byun Baekhyun, sociology student at—oh he’s at school right by your firm, Minseok.” Sehun elbows him. “He acts in a local troupe. He has a dog. Cute dog, too. Volunteers at—”

“Don’t you think this is a little creepy?” Minseok silently thanks Junmyeon for always being the voice of reason. “It’s his soulmate. Stop online stalking.”

“This is all stuff he’ll learn anyway,” Sehun says. “It’s not creepy. It’s research.”

“Well I’m going to research my way home.” Junmyeon stands, pushes his chair in. “Have fun being creepers.”

“I dunno why you guys hang out with him,” Sehun comments. “Oh, look at this, he has approximately seven thousand pictures uploaded.”

“I wanna see,” Jongdae says in the middle of snatching Sehun’s phone. His finger grazes over the screen for a while, then he hands the phone back. “You have to bed him.”

“He’s nineteen,” Minseok whines.

“And you’re twenty…however old.”

“Six.”

“Right,” Jongdae nods. “You’re old, and you haven’t gotten laid since—” Minseok, despite all the alcohol, still manages to muster up a glare that stops Jongdae’s sentence immediately. “All I’m saying is he’s your person, and you should just take advantage of that.”

“Phrasing,” Sehun laughs slightly.

Minseok’s head flops back down on the table.

***

At six in the morning, Minseok’s phone pings. He looks over at it on the coffee table, then stretches his arm out to grab it. The shots have long since worn off and sadly hadn’t made him pass out. Instead, he’d spent his time considering whether or not it would be possible to sue Fate. If he could possibly ignore this kid for the next two years. And one fleeting thought about Baekhyun’s pouty lips and how they might feel but he shooed that thought away in favor of watching infomercials and zoning out.

Rather than a text, as he expected, an email awaits him from an address he’d never contacted but immediately recognizes—byunbh@csu.edu. Baekhyun had found him. Somehow, that possibility didn’t even occur to Minseok.

_Hello Minseok!_

_I’m Byun Baekhyun. You may have heard of me from such body parts as your wrist. I was minding my business earlier today, trying to prepare for a test, when I felt the flames of a thousand suns on my arm and then boop! Your name appeared. I think you owe me dinner for the pain. I’m including my phone number. Please text me when you wake up so that I know that this is the right Kim Minseok and I didn’t just make an ass of myself._

_Yours, literally,_

_B._

Minseok turns his phone off.

***

“Oh hey, you’re alive.” The smile in Yixing’s voice makes Minseok’s terrible mood that much worse. Not that Yixing had personally done anything; somehow, trying to hide from the boy on his wrist for an entire weekend left Minseok exhausted, crabby, and horny, none of which bade well for a day’s work that Monday. “I tried to text you to meet up about the Kim case.”

“Sorry,” Minseok grumbles. His clothes don’t hang on him as neatly as they normally do, but Yixing doesn’t comment and Minseok appreciates not having to go into it. “Um. Did you want—”

“Someone stopped in looking for you not even fifteen minutes ago,” Yixing continues. Somehow, Minseok’s heart freezes and works overtime all at once. “I told him you would be in later. He said he’d come back.”

“Did he have pink hair?” Minseok asks.

“He did! I thought that was weird. But it worked on him, so—”

Minseok slams his office door. This also did not factor into his avoidance strategy. Of course this kid knew where he worked; how else could he get his work email address? The only option, obviously, is to throw away five years of elbow-rubbing and start over at another firm far, far away without ever putting any information on the internet. This was all the internet’s fault, really.

He works for all of ten minutes before there’s a knock on his door. He expects Yixing to poke his head in, but instead, pink shows up.  _Son of a bitch._

Byun Baekhyun, in person, somehow manages to be even cuter. He sidesteps his way in as the door closes—presumably with Yixing doing the closing—and smiles politely, clearly working hard to keep his grin from growing. He holds his backpack in front of his thin legs and bounces some on his heels. This boy is precious.  _Double son of a bitch._

“You didn’t answer my email,” he says, and Minseok blinks. That voice is higher than he expected and yet he wants to keep listening to it and that just pisses him off more.

“Get out of my office.”

It startles Minseok how rude he sounds, and he finds himself surprised again that the boy takes a step in his direction. He closes the gap between them, drops his backpack beside a chair, and sits himself down.

“That’s really no way to talk to your soulmate,” Baekhyun smirks with a small shake of his head to get the hair out of his eyes. His stupid, bright, shiny eyes.

“Get out of my office…please,” Minseok says. Baekhyun laughs and leans forward to help himself to a mint on the desk.

“Your boss is cute,” he comments. “Does he have a soulmate? I have a friend that’s single.”

“You really should not be here.” Minseok tries again. “I don’t know you, you don’t know me. You should be in school.”

“Mondays are my light day,” Baekhyun says. “Just one class at 1. You’ll learn my schedule soon enough.” He leans back in the chair and Minseok stares at his computer monitor rather than at this boy. “I just decided to go to campus early to study and figured your work address was in walking distance, so…Hello, soulmate.”

“Stop,” Minseok sighs. “You have to leave.”

“You owe me dinner,” Baekhyun argues.

“Out.”

“Dinner! Come on. Look at me. Look at this face.” Minseok has no idea when Baekhyun got up, but suddenly there’s hardly any breathing space between them and he doesn’t run the risk of running out of air. This boy’s eyelashes are ridiculously curly and he notices a faint hint of eyeliner. “You absolutely cannot resist this. Take me to dinner.”

“Fine, okay, dinner. Just please go. I have work.”

Baekhyun’s satisfied smile replays in Minseok’s head for the rest of the day.

***

Minseok has zero trust in himself going to dinner alone with Baekhyun. He harasses his friends in their group chat, but only Jongdae has the free time available to come. And so they sit, staring across the table at this kid and his giant friend from the pictures. The younger boys smile too hard and it looks like they’re plotting something and Minseok feels way more uncomfortable than he cares to think about.

“So you’re in college,” Jongdae says to fill the silence. “Sociology, eh? How’s that working out?”

“Pretty well,” Baekhyun nods. “I have a paper to work on about an ethnography…That’s really not interesting. Chanyeol is a music major.” He glances to his tall, bespectacled friend with an adoring smile, and Minseok would swear if he didn’t know better that the two of them were the real couple at the table.

Not that he and Baekhyun are a couple.

_Triple son of a bitch._

“What do you play?” Jongdae’s interest suddenly piques and he leans in to the conversation.

The three of them discuss music—Chanyeol plays drums and guitar, Baekhyun sings but only as a hobby, Jongdae tells them of his stint as the lead singer of a hair metal cover band—long enough that Minseok wonders if he should leave them for some privacy. He frowns, staring into his half-empty wine glass, and wonders why exactly he feels so awkward.

“Minseok here has a great voice, too,” Jongdae says.

“What?” Minseok snaps his head up. “What, no—”

“And he’s good at rapping! You’d never guess, right?” Minseok considers punching Jongdae right in his cat-like mouth.

“I like rap too!” the tall one’s enthusiasm gets the better of him and he knocks his water onto himself. “Ah, crap.”

“He’s really good at it,” Baekhyun comments as he starts dabbing napkins onto Chanyeol’s damp lap.

“I think he can do that himself,” Minseok says. He’s really not sure where the bitterness in his voice comes from, and from Baekhyun’s and Chanyeol’s faces, neither are they. “I mean. Isn’t that weird?”

“Oh, no, he’s touched my junk lots of times,” Chanyeol says. As if it’s the most normal thing in the world. The suddenness of it makes Jongdae howl with laughter, and Baekhyun blushes. He moves his hands back into his own lap. “Sorry.”

“You two dating?” Jongdae asks.

“Right now? No,” Chanyeol says. He smiles again. “Never, actually. It’d be like dating my sister.”

“Why couldn’t you say brother!” Baekhyun whacks him in the chest, and their bickering gets added to the growing list of things that grate on Minseok’s nerves.

Jongdae, on the other hand, seems more than amused by them. They start talking more about school and life after graduation and Minseok tries not to seem too interested as Baekhyun explains his life plan. He feels a bit weird knowing that this boy’s editing his life as he goes in order to include Minseok, and yet here he was, actively trying to delete him.

He sighs. “It’s getting late,” he says. It’s barely past 8. “I should probably take off; I’ve got a lot of work to do.”

“Can we have lunch together tomorrow?”

The hopefulness in his voice, the sparkle in his eye, makes it almost impossible for Minseok to say no. Almost.

***

By their third quadruple date, as Baekhyun calls it, it feels as if Jongdae, Chanyeol, and Baekhyun are old friends. They laugh in sync at the movie on the screen, reach for popcorn at the same time, chatter with each other during dull bits. Minseok feels a little weird sitting quietly on the end, as if he’s the odd man out on his own date.

Not that it was a date.

Baekhyun’s pinky grazing the back of his hand snaps him out of his sulking, and he looks over to see the younger boy smiling at him, face illuminated by the screen. Minseok smiles back for once. That’s enough for Baekhyun, and the boy hooks their pinkies together for the rest of the movie.

When they get to the karaoke room, Baekhyun sits practically on top of Minseok to flip through the song selection book. Minseok leans into him for a second, inhaling Baekhyun’s scent of fresh laundry and cherry shampoo, then remembers his resolve and scoots away. It scares him how comfortable that felt for a split second.

It takes another two group dates before Minseok decides it’s okay to have lunch with Baekhyun alone. He tries not to feel awkward about being in a three-piece suit as Baekhyun grins his way toward the table in jeans and a light pink sweater. He stands, then sits again as Baekhyun sits.

“You’ll be pleased to know that you’re sitting across from someone who got the highest midterm score in his class,” Baekhyun smiles.

Minseok finds himself not even having to fake smiling back. “Good for you,” he says, nodding. “You studied very hard.”

“Because you bribed me,” Baekhyun points out. Minseok laughs quietly, somewhat pleased that his insistence that Baekhyun study or else they couldn’t meet up actually worked.

He startles at the feeling of something against his ankle, then looks down to notice Baekhyun’s foot rubbing him. He looks up again, stares at Baekhyun’s flirty smile, and finds himself unsure of what to say.

“So how’s the Kim case?” Baekhyun asks. “Still a nightmare?”

“Yes, and I’m not going to say more,” Minseok says. “I shouldn’t have mentioned anything at all, honestly.”

“When are you going to kiss me?” Baekhyun switches gears without missing a beat. Minseok feels a warmth in him radiating and he practically chugs his wine to cool it down. The lack of an answer doesn’t faze Baekhyun. “Maybe this weekend we can do dinner at my apartment. You can wear something casual. I can introduce you to my dog. He’s a bit fat but I love him anyway.”

“I have a lot of work to do this weekend,” Minseok says.

“I’ll come over and help you.”

“You’re not licensed for that.”

“So I’ll come over and make you snacks while you work,” Baekhyun shrugs. “We’re meant to be together. You should really stop fighting me on this.”

Baekhyun places his hand palm up on the table and gives Minseok an expectant look. Minseok, for all his protesting, knows the kid has a point. He knows it’s almost inevitable that it will happen unless he escapes to a life of solitude in the mountains. He knows that Baekhyun, as annoying and pushy as he is, makes him feel a kind of happiness he hadn’t considered was a possibility before.

Minseok sighs, then places his hand in Baekhyun’s gently.

***

“This is honestly the worst!”

Baekhyun’s whining overshadows the music pulsing out of Chanyeol’s phone from the sidelines. He stands in the middle of the park’s basketball court, sweaty and crabby and hands on his hips. Minseok tries not to stare, but has the ball easily stolen from him as he sneaks another look at Baekhyun. Jongdae and Chanyeol give a celebratory hoot as Chanyeol makes another basket.

“This isn’t fair!” Baekhyun continues his complaints in the midst of their poorly-choreographed victory dance. “I’m the only one that’s no good at basketball. I shouldn’t have to play.”

Even in the poor lighting of the street lamps overhead, even with random hair sticking up from sweat and the light breeze wafting through, Minseok thinks Baekhyun looks lovely. It’s a thought that still feels wrong to have, but he’s had a whole month to try and deal with it. He cares about this kid. He can’t quite see caring about anyone else nearly as much.

He crosses the court over to Baekhyun and puts his hands on Baekhyun’s shoulders before pulling him closer to kiss his forehead. The way Baekhyun leans into it makes Minseok’s insides feel way squishier than he cares to think about. A whole month and he still hadn’t quite gotten comfortable enough to do much more than these chaste forehead kisses. Sometimes, when Baekhyun would look at him during late nights spent studying and working on cases, Minseok thinks about how nice it would be to kiss him,  _really_  kiss him. He works out harder as some kind of penance when that happens.

“Take it to the bedroom,” Jongdae calls out. Minseok laughs some against Baekhyun’s forehead before pulling away to steal the ball back.

***

Sometime in the spring, Minseok realizes he’s in love with Baekhyun.

It isn’t a sudden light bulb moment, or something out of a drama. It’s a brief thought in the middle of their third movie for the night, resting together on Baekhyun’s sofa under an oversized blanket with the fat dog comfortably snoring atop their tangled legs. A line in the movie makes Baekhyun laugh, nose crinkling, but Minseok is too busy watching this boy beside him to know what exactly it was.

They’d spent the winter getting to know each other more, with Minseok slowly dismantling the wall he’d crafted to keep Baekhyun out of his life. They’d started having lunch together almost daily by January. The group dates turned into every other Saturday evening. On Sundays, Baekhyun and his dog joined Minseok for long walks through the park. On Mondays, Baekhyun’s short day, he’d come study quietly in Minseok’s office while Minseok and Yixing tried to sort out case details. And Friday nights, like this night, were for movies at Baekhyun’s apartment. They fit into each other’s lives as if they’d always been there. Minseok enjoys the familiarity.

He smiles, more at Baekhyun than at the film, and doesn’t even feel embarrassed when Baekhyun catches him staring.

“You’re not even paying attention to the movie,” Baekhyun says. “Is it boring? Should I turn it off? I think we have one other choice lef—”

Kissing Baekhyun feels better than Minseok had anticipated. Maybe because in doing so, he also manages to shut him up. Not completely, though, as Baekhyun hums and laughs against Minseok’s lips. He shoos the dog out of the way and leans into Minseok, which suddenly makes this whole kissing thing way too real.

“I should get home,” Minseok says as he slides off the couch.

Baekhyun eyes Minseok’s lap, at the tenting starting, but doesn’t try to keep him around for once.

***

“Honestly, it’s been almost half a year,” Jongdae says, attempting a jump that just winds up with his character falling down a crevice. Again. He sighs and restarts  the level. “And you’re just now kissing him, and then you ran away to come here. I get taking it slow, Minseok, but this is just embarrassing. Sloths have come and gone faster than you’re moving.”

Minseok, flat on his back on Jongdae’s living room floor, can’t do much more than slowly pet Jongdae’s cat that made herself at home on his chest. He sighs and closes his eyes to try not to think for a moment, but all that accomplishes is making him remember closing his eyes before kissing Baekhyun.

“I think,” Minseok says carefully, “that if I just wait until…until I can answer the ‘how old is he’ question without the word ‘teen,’ I’ll be okay.”

“So when is his birthday?”

“Next month.”

“Thank God,” Jongdae sighs as he dies again and the failure music queues up. “Then you can stop torturing yourself and fuck him already. Which, by the way, doing it now and waiting a few weeks really means nothing, in the grand scheme of things.”

Minseok unplugs the game console.

***

This Saturday is an off week, so no converging at Baekhyun’s to decide the destination for the evening, spending few hours listening to Baekhyun and Jongdae bicker about where to go, and then piling into Minseok’s car to go to a place that ultimately Chanyeol picks. Minseok is grateful for that, at least. What he isn’t grateful for is the knot in his stomach that refuses to leave at the thought of somehow offending Baekhyun by running away.

By four pm on any other Saturday, he’d have already gotten at least ten texts from Baekhyun. Today, nothing. He turns his phone on and off three different times to make sure it’s not malfunctioning somehow. A text from Junmyeon disproves his broken phone theory.

He stares at his lock screen for a while and catches himself in a smile—it’s a photo of him and Baekhyun from December, during an impromptu weekend trip to celebrate Baekhyun acing his finals for the semester. They’d shared a room, but Minseok insisted on separate beds, even though on the second night, they’d wound up falling asleep cuddled together anyway. He shoves the phone into his pocket and jumps to his feet, grabbing his keys.

Baekhyun looks lost upon opening the door and seeing Minseok standing there, but explaining wasn’t something Minseok felt like doing at the moment. His hand cups the back of Baekhyun’s neck to cut him off in the middle of asking something, their mouths sliding against each other with urgency and abandon and something Minseok thinks is probably love.

  
He kicks the door closed behind himself and uses a free hand to drag Baekhyun’s hips closer to his own. The tiny noise that comes out of Baekhyun makes Minseok’s chest tighten. He kisses him harder, as if that will somehow take the tightness away.

When Baekhyun can finally push him away, he looks to Minseok with confusion. “What’s happening right now?” he asks, voice husky.

  
“I’m sorry,” Minseok says. “I am dumb and I shouldn’t have run away but this…this is scary.”

“Because I’m nineteen?”

“Because I love you.” Minseok and Baekhyun both have wide eyes at that. The tightening just gets worse. “You’re really annoying, and whiny and needy and…pushy and you’re so out of shape you sweat just lifting your spoon to eat soup—”

“Okay this is just offensive.”

“—but I love you, even despite all that. Maybe a little because of it. And I didn’t want to love you just because my arm says so. But I’m dumb. And I should’ve just…let it happen. So that’s that. I love you. You’re a dick.”

“You’ve literally never confessed to someone before, have you,” Baekhyun asks, smirking. Minseok doesn’t have any words left at that and instead just musses Baekhyun’s hair.

***

“Have you done this before?” Baekhyun asks as he balls his shirt up and tosses it toward his hamper.

Minseok, seated cross-legged on Baekhyun’s bed, stares. There’s nothing even remotely resembling insecurity with Baekhyun, not that Minseok thinks there ought to be. He’d seen the boy undressed before, despite trying not to look, but this time something new hangs in the air. When Baekhyun is down to his dark gray briefs, he lifts his eyes to stare at Minseok, flipping his hair back out of his face.

“What?” he asks, hands on the gentle curve of his hips.

“Nothing,” Minseok shakes his head, which isn’t the complete truth. The truth is he wants to look at him forever. That he wants to touch him and hold him and just enjoy him, but all of that is far too squishy to deal with. Instead, he just smiles. “Shouldn’t I be asking you that? I’m the older one here.”

“Older doesn’t equal more experienced,” Baekhyun says. He climbs his way onto his bed, putting his face as close to Minseok’s as he can without mashing any parts together. “You know that. So have you?”

Minseok doesn’t care to think about the handful of times he had, in fact, done this before. This time, with this boy, didn’t need to be sullied like that.

“A few times,” Minseok nods. Baekhyun accepts it well enough and plants a small kiss on Minseok’s lips. “Have you?”

“No, this will be the very first time.” Baekhyun leans back some before letting out a boisterous laugh. “I’m kidding. Don’t look so panicked.”

“That’s not funny,” Minseok grumbles. He grips Baekhyun’s bicep, pulling him closer for another kiss.

“Was a little bit funny,” Baekhyun murmurs.

His arms wrap around Minseok’s neck, pulling him on top as he lies back against the bed. Minseok tries not to think about talking himself out of this; he wants to, more than wants to as he feels Baekhyun’s slim hand slide between them. The soft gasps, the gentle rolls of hips, it all amasses to drive Minseok crazy in a way he’d never felt before. He thinks briefly about asking Junmyeon if it’s always like this with a soulmate, or only the first time.

He dips his head, drawing Baekhyun’s mouth to his own again to try and quiet his head. It’s much better to focus on Baekhyun and his quiet, almost desperate hums, on the boy’s hands on his hips starting to tug at his underwear. When they’re left with nothing but skin against skin, Minseok leans back some, holding himself up to look down at Baekhyun.

“Are you crying?” he teases.

Baekhyun laughs again and covers his face with his hands. “Shut up, you’re ruining it!” he shouts. “Just fuck me. Please.”

Minseok chuckles and kisses Baekhyun again as he reaches down to give Baekhyun a firm stroke. The way Baekhyun shudders beneath him, his member pulsing in his hand, teeters dangerously close to being addictive. His fingers gather slickness, and he presses them against Baekhyun’s entrance, eliciting a sharp hiss from the boy. Their kissing grows more frantic as Minseok moves his fingers to prepare Baekhyun, as if Baekhyun thinks easing up might make Minseok disappear completely.

When they connect, _finally_ connect, Minseok lets out a breath he’d been holding since he met this boy. He breathes in everything about him, carefully pushing into him and pulling away just to hear Baekhyun’s whines. And when they meet eyes, they share a smile that lights Minseok from within and he has no idea if he’ll ever be able to live without this again. He leans in and kisses Baekhyun’s nose, a short laugh within his throat.

Baekhyun digs his nails into Minseok’s back as his hips start to meet Minseok’s in a more erratic rhythm. Minseok can feel himself slipping as well, no matter how much he wants this to keep going forever. He pushes against Baekhyun with a bit more force, quiet grunts peppering each movement. There aren’t any stars as he comes, but everything falls away and all he can focus on is Baekhyun. The sweat pearling on Baekhyun’s forehead. The adorable scrunch of his nose as he bites his lips in a failed attempt to be quieter. The redness blooming from Minseok’s earlier attention on Baekhyun’s collarbone. All of it is perfect. All of it is his.

He stops for a moment, then starts to laugh again. “You cried,” he says. “I’m going to make fun of you for that forever.”

Something sparks in Baekhyun’s eyes as soon as that word slips out, but he tries to downplay it with a slap to Minseok’s arm. “I just thought you’d make me wait until my birthday,” he says. “Shut up. Help me get off, selfish jerk.”

**Author's Note:**

> This was written as part of the Winterlights Xiubaek fic fest. First time entering a fest, first time dabbling in soulmate AU. Comments and kudos are much appreciated! And you can find me cluttering up people's dashes on tumblr [here](http://poshcy.tumblr.com/) if you want to say hi or yell or throw the occasional request at me.


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